Die young or grow oldso far there seems to be no other option. Yet
society regards old age as "a kind of shameful secret," complains
French Novelist and Treatise Writer Simone de Beauvoir, now in her 65th
year. Old people, she argues brilliantly and bitterly, are condemned
not only to decrepitude but to poverty and loneliness. In the face of
this, they are also asked "to display serenity" so that their juniors
will be spared guilt.

With the same tough panache she showed in pioneering Women's Liberation
(The...